Workplace culture is changing fast, and many CFOs feel the pressure within their finance teams and across the organization. Whether it’s younger employees making unreasonable time off or compensation requests, new buzzwords popping up in team chats or fashion trends that are impacting return-to-office campaigns, these shifts are starting to impact how finance teams hire, plan and operate.
Here are five emerging trends finance leaders should have on their radar.
1. Mini retirement
A mini retirement is an extended break from work, often lasting several months to a year, taken during one’s working years to rest, travel or focus on personal growth. This growing trend may pose challenges for finance leaders in workforce planning, succession readiness and retention forecasting. Resume gaps may become more common and less stigmatized, prompting a shift in how hiring managers evaluate talent histories.
2. Office-moons
The way to describe the pre-RTO period when remote employees take a final stretch of time to mentally and logistically prepare for being on-site again has been dubbed an office-moon. Often spent adjusting routines or buying new work clothes, according to the creators of the term, this behavior may signal latent resistance to RTO mandates. CFOs overseeing real estate spend, productivity targets or change management initiatives should note that attendance often dips just before formal RTO begins, which can potentially affect early morale momentum and ROI on office investments.
3. Quiet cracking
Quiet cracking refers to a persistent and often invisible form of workplace unhappiness that leads to disengagement, declining performance and a desire to quit. For finance leaders, detecting early signs is difficult but critical to managing morale and team productivity. For CFOs, this presents a hidden cost risk with potentially lower output, increased attrition and rising costs to rehire or re-engage talent. Identifying early warning signs in finance teams, particularly during periods of high stress or transformation, is critical to countering this trend.
4. Quiet luxury
Quiet luxury is a fashion and lifestyle trend centered on understated, high-quality and logo-free items. It emphasizes craftsmanship and timelessness over flashy branding. In the workplace, this may reflect a generational shift in how younger professionals express identity and success. CFOs should be aware of the trend’s influence on company culture, dress codes and even workplace branding as unprecedentedly multi-generational teams work alongside one another in the office.
5. Poggers
Poggers is a trendy slang term rooted in gaming and internet culture, especially on Twitch. It expresses excitement or amazement in response to something impressive or unexpected. As finance teams recruit younger talent into FP&A, strategic finance and data roles, CFOs may encounter language and cultural references like this during onboarding, team-building or informal communications.
